'Deadpool' Shatters More Than Just Box-Office Records

The opening weekend for Deadpool shattered a ton of box office records raking in $135 million.

But wait! There's more box office records to shatter here. For instance it was the biggest R-rated movie opening of all-time, biggest February opening, and biggest opening for Fox. The film made an extra $125 million from international markets for a massive $260 million global launch, a pretty good start for a film that Fox didn't even want to make.

There was one other record that hasn’t been mentioned as much: the biggest opening ever for a first-time feature film director. Tim Miller has--until now--spent his entire career as an animator.

Miller is one of the owners of Blur, the commercial studio known for its cinematics on games like “Mass Effect 2,” “Halo Wars 2,” and “Star Wars: The Old Republic.” Blur’s feature film experience runs deep, too, including the prologue sequence for the Marvel sequel, Thor: The Dark World, not to mention the titles for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the Heaven & Hell sequence of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

Miller credits not just his animation knowledge, but his experience running an animation studio for helping him survive his first live-action feature. “This production is about the size of business my company does in a year sort of crammed into a six month period,” he said. “So, I think just managing people and not having them hate you, utterly, a little bit maybe, but not completely, that was a big help.”

Over the next few days, I'm sure we’ll be reading and hearing plenty about the outsized success of Deadpool at the box office, and a lot of people in Hollywood will attempt to take credit for its success. So, let’s not forget that the man at the helm, the director who delivered the goods, is one of our very own.